Hugo Weaving, Meg Washington on adapting Paul Kelly's How To ...
How do you turn a song into a feature-length film?
In the case of How To Make Gravy, a new movie based on Paul Kelly's beloved Australian Christmas anthem, the secret ingredient was in the source… material.
Kelly's vividly sketched 1996 original is narrated by Joe, a newly incarcerated prisoner penning a letter home to his family as they prepare to spend their first Christmas without him.
"We made the decision really early on to be as faithful as we could be to the song for as much of the film as possible," says Megan Washington, the ARIA-winning musician who, with partner Nick Waterman, adapted the song to the screen.
"We wanted to invent as little as possible and sort of treat the lyrics like Shakespeare and extract everything from them."
The idea originated in 2019, at Christmas drinks with friends, who suggested to Washington and Waterman that How To Make Gravy would make a good film. The couple approached Kelly's management with the concept, and were invited to see him perform in Brisbane on Gravy Day, aka December 21 — the setting of the song.
"There we were in the rain, Paul was playing the song, and all 10,000 people were crying. We thought, we have to try and make this happen," Washington says.
Fast-forward five years, and the couple's film is a reality, courtesy of their production company, Speech & Drama Pictures, and Binge, marking both the streaming platform's first local film production and Waterman's full-length directorial debut.
Washington tells Double J's Stacy Gougoulis that they weren't the first to approach Kelly. "Over the song's lifetime, I think there's been other projects that were suggested to him that didn't happen for whatever reason.
"So, it wasn't a novel idea to him. But he was very cool about it and very clear that he saw the song as a jumping off point for us to do our own thing.
"I like to say the song is the stars that we sail by down here on our planet inside the film."
An ensemble castHow To Make Gravy stars Daniel Henshall (The Snowtown Murders, Mystery Road: Origin) as Joe, whose trauma over the loss of his parents and anger-management issues lead to a violent Christmas conflict that lands him with a prison sentence.
Agathe Rousselle (star of Titane in her English-language film debut) plays Joe's partner Rita. Brenton Thwaites is younger brother Dan, who moves in after Joe's arrest to support Rita and the three children. That includes nine-year-old son Angus, who narrates early in the film: "My dad is not bad. He's a good dad, who had a really bad day."
The film begins with a Christmas family dinner, before the events of Paul Kelly's 1996 song. (Supplied: BINGE/Jasin Boland)
As per the song, the extended family includes Kim Gyngell and Eugene Gilfedder as "the brothers driving down from Queensland", Kate Mulvany as Joe's sister Stella, "flying in from the coast" with her "king idiot prick" husband Roger, played by Brendon Thwaites.
How To Make Gravy also fleshes out the prison side of Joe's world, inventing some crucial characters in the process. That includes Noel, the prison cook who takes Joe under his wing, played by Australian screen icon and "big Paul Kelly fan" Hugo Weaving.
"And even more of a big Paul Kelly fan after working on the film," adds Weaving, who first remembers hearing How To Make Gravy "late night on Rage."
"The song is sort of open ended. You know the film is going to be about family. You know it's going to be about Joe writing from prison. And then you go, well, the other part of the song that's not there is his life in prison, so reading the script was a thrill."
"I so loved him as a character on the page." Hugo Weaving as Noel, a character not in Paul Kelly's original song. (Supplied: BINGE / Jasin Boland)
In stark contrast to his most well-known roles — the villainous Agent Smith or stoic Elvish lord Elrond in the respective Matrix and The Lord of the Rings franchises — Weaving plays a "classic Australian male character … a real human being".
"It's an absolute pleasure to play a role like that because you don't really often get to see very recognisably Australian male characters who also embrace their frailties and are responsible for who they are … and can say sorry."
For Henshall, he spent months discussing the ins-and-outs of Joe with Waterman, using the song as set-up to explore wider themes of masculinity, mateship, and redemption.
Paul Kelly's music was "very much in the background of my childhood," says the 42-year-old actor. He remembers hearing Dumb Things in Young Einstein, a 1988 comedy vehicle for Yahoo Serious.
"I was a big fan but it wasn't until I started travelling back and forth from Australia for work and whatnot in my early 30s where Kelly really hit. And '…Gravy' was one of the first ones to hit," Henshall says.
"Because it really made me think of home. The people I wasn't seeing and the people I needed to connect to … The smell of gravy, the tension in the air around the Christmas table. There was something in that which just made me really miss home."
Joe (Daniel Henshall) gets assistance from prison cook and mens' therapy leader Noel (Hugo Weaving) with his iconic gravy recipe. (Binge: Jasin Boland)
That sensation is beautifully captured in the movie right from the jump, where the cries of cicadas evoke the summer heat, and characters cool off with stubby-held beers and Zooper Doopers.
Edward Goldner's gorgeous cinematography captures suburban Queensland, the family huddled around the lounge, kitchen and outdoor trestle table for the main event.
"We really wanted it to feel like an Australian music culture fever dream, and for it to have that sort of ephemeral quality," explains Washington, who has a bit part in the film as Joe's neighbour, Kelly.
"We came up with the concept of Australian Gotham, all of your memories of Christmas kind of melded into one world … Because we are inside of the song, it really informs the tone of the world that we were trying to create."
The power of musicThe two-hour feature is operating on a few levels. It's an Australian family drama, a Christmas flick, a prison movie, and spiritually, Weaving notes, "Aside from everything else, it's a musical, too. It's structured like a musical."
The soundtrack features pub-punks Amyl & The Sniffers (their belter 'Security' scores the tough realities of jail life under the opening credits) and The Beddy Rays (with original song 'Red Hot Chrissy'), alongside classics from Nina Simone and Vince Guaraldi, plus original music written by Washington.
In one scene, Briggs teaches a fellow officer how to process prisoner mail, including Joe's iconic letter. (Binge: Jasin Boland)
The film also features a bevy of Australian musicians in supporting roles, including former The Grates singer Patience Hodgson and — in a brilliant bit of casting irony — Adam Briggs, proud Yorta Yorta man and one half of award-hoovering hip-hop duo A.B. Original, as a corrections officer.
There's also a cheeky cameo from Paul Kelly, while Dallas Woods (Baker Boy mentor and member of ARIA-winning supergroup 3%) and queer singer-songwriter Brendan Maclean are prison kitchen hands.
"They were so fabulous, both of them," gushes Weaving, who shares several scenes with both artists. "What a treat to have so many great musicians on set."
Dallas Woods and Brendan Maclean respectively play Breaka and Possum, who assist Hugo Weaving's Noel in the prison kitchen. (Binge: Jasin Boland)
He and the wider cast and crew enjoyed powerful live performances from Maclean and Zaachariaha Fielding (of 2024 Australian Eurovision Song Contest reps Electric Fields), leading the film's prison choir.
"We are in floods of tears on the day listening to them, it was so glorious to hear that music," says Weaving.
Henshall agrees. "The healing quality of song … you get that feeling, in the mess hall when that is being sung to the inmates, a sense of release.
"Paul Kelly's music and storytelling is so resonant with so many in this country. And it has a healing quality, too.
"It teaches us stuff about ourselves. It gives us better perspective on the people we go to work with, we have in our families, that we love, that we fight with. In homage to that — Kelly's catalogue — Meg and Nick's music in the film does the same thing for the characters in the film that Paul's music does for us."
It remains to be seen if How To Make Gravy will be embraced as a seasonal staple in the same way the song has.
The film is a stark portrait of how family gatherings can bring out the worst in us, with a side helping of toxic masculinity — a far cry from the feel-good, warm and fuzzy cliches offered in the already-crowded Christmas movie genre.
But then again, Paul Kelly never imagined his seemingly bleak yuletide song could become a widespread phenomenon. ("[It] doesn't have a chorus, it's set in prison, so I never thought it would be a hit," he once deadpanned.)
A recognisably Australian drama, How To Make Gravy — like Joe's original recipe — has the sweetness and extra tang that could prove a word-of-mouth-success.
How To Make Gravy can be streamed on Binge from today.